How Did The 80's Not Kill (Most Of) Us? (Page 2)
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Yet we managed to live through all those horrible things. In the summer, my mother would say "get out of the house and come back when the street lights come on". No cell phones, no pagers. She had no clue where I was and what I was doing all day. We explored the world. We did not get all bent out of shape when the world wasn't handed to us or we had to actually work for stuff.
Y'all aren't even talking about the stuff just around the house! 43 cans of hairspray to keep your hair up. Slip n slides. Ez bake ovens. The cereal that gave you diabetes just by walking past it. Oh and like everyone smoked back then and kids were just expected to deal with it.
Kids use to sleep on the back seat shelf, and as you said, no seat belts. That is why Jane Mansfield was killed in an auto accident when she flew through the windshield and got scalped. But parents also taught us a little more than kids get taught today.
I remember my dad wouldn't start the car until everyone had their seatbelts on. One of his younger brothers was killed in a minor car crash when that brother was only around 19 I think. So he was always very cautious.
I was born in 1968 but went through the '80s, I was in Middle School and bullying was bad for me I had a lot to deal with a lot of mental and physical abuse. The '80s were the years my late maternal grandparents had us over for Sunday dinners and there was an outburst between the family and my uncle and aunt picked up with the cousins and left from that day on my grand-dad said, there would never be another Sunday meal.
That's called "idealizing a decade". No decade was that great. Each decade brought serious issues. In the 80's the drug lords had more power than ever. Pablo Escobar was the ritchest of all, and he made of Colombia a hell on earth; flooding the US and other countries, with cocaine. There are more things to consider.
There is no point at which I recalled in this take, a perfect 80s decade where nothing bad ever happened. On the contrary, this is about how dangerous by today's standards it was for kids in the 80s, and yet somehow we survived it (well, most of us). Drugs have practically existed in every decade and it's outcomes have never been good, but I'm focusing on the experience of literal children in the 80s, most of which in the US weren't involved in the cocaine trade.
Some of the things that happened with all the things you mentioned were actually not great outcomes for kids.
Action Park is a great example. People died and ridiculous amounts severely injured with the don't worry about it approach which was rampant 70s-80s.
Kids were getting f'd up before helmets etc
Point is you made it out fine but enough people didn't that prompted more change around safety etc.
Have we gone too far? Possibly.
Bc our parents were high on coke/shoulder pads/hairspray (pick one, or all), were raised by a generation that understood that talking about "feelings" is a bad idea, and didn't have any nazis to punch so they elected Reagan and thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Twice. But we got a Howard The Duck movie produced by George Lucas out of it!
They "didn't have any nazis to punch" because there were people around who remembered exactly what they were like. Unfortunately, that's being intentionally obscured, today.
I was in my later teens but you’re right, we did so many things that are considered dangerous back then and I’m still here. Seat belts were not a law until 1985 in New York and later in other states, I didn’t use them until they enforced it. Still never use a helmet on a bicycle, never hit my head when I fell it usually my hands , arms and legs that got hurt. Not sure why you chose to be anonymous for this but it was a nice take
In the 80's, I was ran over by a van on my skateboard and walked home when I was 7. Walking to and from school in first grade, getting suspended for fighting 3 times in second grade, staying home with my bro until my parents got home at age 9, riding in the back of a pickup truck while my friend's dad drove drunk, the list can go on and on hahaha
The thing is people are more stupid today and make their offspring even more retarded in survival and common sense how to learn to survive and use the environment around us without harming ourselves.
They doesn't learn to be self reliant.
Curling our children only creates problems to be strong and handle life as adults. creates dependent individual that must re educate basic survival skills as adults to survive.
Some thing's wasn't a good thing like you showed.
Without seatbelts and taking a ride on a pickup.
Those attitudes were just foolish in the same degree as spitting frozen burgers with a knife against your hand. an accident waiting to happen that shouldn't be done in the first place.
My parents were boomers, so they were married in 1984. They were already adults in the 80s. Since I don't think it matters, my dad was born in 1952 making him 30 by 1982, and done with graduate school. My mom was born in 1958 and by the mid 80s was in medical school (albeit married). So they were employed or going towards a high level of employment for most of the 80s.
at 13 it was a normal Saturday to walk down the street with my friends and our rifles and a bag of used cans and bottles that we would carry up the mountain, Private property mind you that we didn't know the owner and we would walk miles up the mountain and shoot the shit out of the cans and bottles. Often we took flashlights and climbed down abandoned mine shafts. Never gave it a second thought.
We weren't as safety oriented back then because people weren't idiots. They didn't feel the need to make not taking safety measures illegal (outside of the workplace I assume). Everyone had an understanding that they were responsible for their own safety and that they have no one to blame but themselves if they injure themselves.
People back then would probably think that we are so spineless that we have to beg the government to tell us when we can or cannot go outside.
I don't know about you... I spent the 80s in an alternate universe, working with aliens on the planet Xenon. It was only a 10-Earth-year gig and I was back on Earth for the 90s.
Yes, There is a book about this Called Free Range Kids by Lenore Skenazy.
My father took out the back seat of the car and put a sheet of plywood and a blanket back that for me and , my brother. We just crawled around with our toy trucks.
We are the last of our kind
If that's the case then how did we not die out anytime before that? As if the 80's was the most dangerous time to live or something.
Not.
And not I don't have to have lived in the 80's to know that, it's just common sense.
Because the 80s wasn't nuclear war that's why you're here today. I did grow up as a child in the 80s and we were fine but things were more dangerous and not safety checked. It's not funny to think a kid could die without a helmet or a seatbelt. Survival of the fittest is true but accidents can happen to the fittest and still die. Things are safer today and a parent has at least more safety measures to ensure a tragedy is less likely. Still anything can happen obviously. I do understand people saying we might have gone too far but safety for kids is important.
All so very true. Have a memory or several to each point you made. The best being we really were the last to have true childhoods raised on common sense. Well written. 👏
weren't the 80's the era of serial killers, widespread crime, kidnappings, etc? plus kids did die, that's why we have seat belt laws.
Seat belt laws were because different states had high freeway speeds that were 70+ . The death toles were humungus and the state was very responsible for all those deaths. So after that they adopted a speed of 55 claiming it saved more gas rather than directly take resonsibilty for the real reason to reduce the speed limit. . So they pointed the finger at stupid irresponsible teens instead.
@Djaay people still routinely drive 70+ on the freeway, so not much has changed there. Do you really think seat belts don't help people stay alive in car crashes?
Sure they do... thatvwasnt my point tho.
@Djaay what was your point then?
I already mentioned it. Comprehend...
@Djaay that it's not necessary to wear a seat belt if you're not going 70+? That the state was responsible for people driving irresponsibly and dying? you make a lot of potential points lol
Hence the title, "how did the 80s not kill most of us."
When the going gets tough , the tough get going.
@Djaay lmao
My childhood was very 80's-esque despite it being in the 2000's but then by 8 I took to digging through the commercial skips to find lucrative scrap
It's all to liberal now and that is just one small reason for me to not have kids
Kids who died in the 80s aren't here to comment on their feelings about the manner in which they died. :(